When users close the paywall, show a discount trial they can't close

Anada Lakra… to implement soon after we started to really iterate on the paywall is that's not what actually matters. You have to actually look at the metrics of actual subscription conversion. Again, that's a pretty well-known thing. I don't think that's new, but the more important thing there is that some of those subscriptions, even though initially they convert, the payment doesn't actually go through and a lot of the refund rate can be a huge delta.

Anada LakraSo what I found is that anything that kind of forces or tricks people into starting a trial, you'll pay it when it comes to refunds. And that is a worse experience because those people who ask for refunds are generally pissed. They're not happy that they have to go through that process. You're also creating this negative user sentiment around the product that you don't want. And then of course, the matured cohort piece is important because people won't ask for the refund necessarily on day one. They'll ask for the refund after they've actually seen that the payment hit their bank account.

Anada LakraSo you have to think about, "Okay, trials start on this date, give it an extra week for them to convert, give it at least two extra weeks for the dust to settle from refunds." Again, it's very tempting to make a quick decision on trials, but you have to give it more time to see the entire story play out.

Anada Lakra… to be able to action it. And the idea of just sitting there on something that could be really promising for an extra month, depending on X number of months, depending on how much ... Again, users you need to validate and get to statistical significance. That part is hard of just sitting on that and being patient. And it also means you can't iterate as fast, you can implement those learnings as fast. So I get it and I was that impatient person.

Anada LakraI'll give you two examples actually. When it comes to the paywall, we tested a hard paywall, where we basically removed the X dismiss button. So people had to start a trial in order to proceed. And then we also tested a version, where there was still a dismiss button on the main paywall, but then if you dismissed it, we gave people an offer of X percent off that they could not X out of. So they would have to start a trial. If they hadn't started at the baseline price, they would have to start it at the lower price. Again, it's a trial, it's not a payment, so they still can't cancel it.

Anada LakraBut both of those look so promising on the trial numbers and it makes sense. People have already put in all that time in the onboarding flow. They actually want to see what this app is all about. And we're like, "Great. This is great. Why are we sitting on this? Why shouldn't just we put this in front of everyone?" And the answer came down to the refunds and the refunds spiked by way more than the gain in STAR trials. And again, it took us a …